The landlord's case is won or lost in the preparation. This module treats the pre-filing discipline as the decisive phase, and walks through demand, affidavit quality, service strategy, and the split between possession and money judgments.
Every Georgia dispossessory begins with a demand for possession — the step most practitioners call the “3-day demand,” although the statute does not prescribe a specific waiting period. The statute does not prescribe a form either. The demand can be oral. It is the existence of a demand, not its elegance, that matters. But the court decides on evidence, and evidence of an oral demand is harder to produce than evidence of a written one.
The workable standard is: demand in writing, deliver by a method that produces a record, retain proof. Certified mail with return receipt, hand delivery with a witness, posting with a dated photograph. The goal is not to impress the tenant; it is to produce, at hearing, a document you can show the judge in thirty seconds.
Dispossessory actions rest on one of three grounds:
The affidavit should state one ground, plainly and accurately. Pleading both nonpayment and holdover in the alternative, when only one fits the facts, invites an impeachment line that experienced tenant counsel will take.
The dispossessory affidavit is sworn. The signer is vouching for the accuracy of the contents. At minimum, it should identify:
Errors in any of these fields are not typographical. They are substantive, and they are defensible at hearing.
Service is the process server's task, not the landlord's. But the landlord has an interest in how service proceeds. If money damages are sought, personal service is required. Tack-and-mail supports possession but not money. A landlord whose process-server return shows a single attempt on a Wednesday afternoon is accepting a substantial risk that the money judgment will be unavailable — and that a contested hearing will turn on that point.
The operational move is to brief the process server: what hours to attempt, how many attempts to make before shifting to tack-and-mail, and what the return should document.
Contested hearings are short. A well-prepared landlord arrives with the lease, the demand documentation, the ledger, the service return, and a one-paragraph chronology. The landlord who testifies about informal conversations and generalized tenant behavior will usually lose to the landlord who shows the judge documents.
A common landlord error is to treat the possession judgment as the endpoint. It is not. Once possession is restored, the money judgment is a separate collection problem, governed by Title 18 of the Georgia Code: garnishment, post-judgment interrogatories, liens. A money judgment without a collection plan is an accounting entry.
The better frame is to plan the collection case at the time of filing. Does the tenant have wages that can be garnished? Bank accounts? Other assets? If the answer is no, the money judgment may be worth less than the filing fees to obtain it, and the possession case can be streamlined accordingly.
Experienced tenant counsel observe that landlord-side cases that fall apart almost always fall apart at the very first step. The most common cluster of errors is short and specific:
Educational publication. This material is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Georgia landlord-tenant law and court procedure change; any reader facing a pending matter should consult qualified Georgia counsel before acting.